


All The King's Men

by AconitumNapellus



Series: All The King's Men [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Burning, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Torture, confused feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 22:06:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13280805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: The best way to get information out of Napoleon is to torture Illya, or so a fanatic thinks. Illya is left injured and confused by his reaction to the torture.(Yes, I am being horrid to Illya again. I am stressed. I'm sorry. No, this isn't slash, but - oh, how it could be, given a few more thousand words.)





	All The King's Men

‘It was a difficult situation, then,’ the psychiatrist says.

He is seated in the chair next to Illya’s hospital bed, one leg bent, ankle resting on his knee, a little pad of paper resting on that bent leg. It’s a mark of the urgency of this situation that he hasn’t waited for Illya to get out of hospital. How often do they send psychiatrists out of headquarters? He doesn’t remember much about what he said yesterday in his drugged and desperate state to make them send for psych, but it must have been notable.

Illya moves against the sheets, and hisses in pain. Tears wet his eyes, and he reaches to press the button for a little more morphine. It enters his vein and sinks into his body. It doesn’t take the pain away, but it makes it matter less.

‘It was a strange situation,’ he murmurs. ‘A megalomaniac. A grand Victorian house out in the suburbs. Nothing either of us had expected. Napoleon looked perfect, of course. He’d hardly been touched. And I – ’

  


It was a ridiculous situation. Utterly ridiculous. Napoleon was seated, still in his pristine tailored suit, tie neatly fastened, hair brylcreemed to neatness. The wingback armchair was a beautiful one, burnt sienna leather burnished to a shine, the generous upholstery dimpled with leather buttons. It suited Napoleon. It was his type of chair. The only signs that his repose was less than voluntary were the chains on his wrists and ankles that were so tight he couldn’t move his limbs.

Illya, in contrast, only three feet away, was standing naked as the day he was born, his clothes lying crumpled in a corner. His arms were wide and stretched up above his head, wrists chained to loops in the ceiling. His legs were held apart, ankles chained to mirroring rings in the floor. The wrist chains were too short for him to be able to rest comfortably on his feet, and he rocked between standing on tiptoe and hanging hard from the cutting metal around his wrists.

‘It’s a very simple business, Mr Solo,’ Ezekiel said. ‘You can tell me what I want to know, or I can hurt your partner beyond endurance.’

Illya had heard that kind of threat so many times before. Two thirds of the time it was an empty threat, or at least one that didn’t have quite the sting the assailant meant it to have. But he had a bad feeling about this one. This was a wild card; not Thrush, not related to any Nazi groups or terrorist organisations. He hadn’t even been on their radar. He had come out of nowhere. Lone wolves were always worrying because they had so little to lose.

‘He doesn’t know anything,’ Napoleon said, and despite his harsh tone Illya could hear something behind it. He knew Napoleon too well. He was very worried. ‘Let him go. I’m the one you want.’

‘I’m sorry, but you’re very much mistaken,’ Ezekiel said, and he put a hand on Illya’s side and rocked him a little in the chains. The cuffs bit into his wrists. ‘I don’t want either of you. I just want the location of that uranium store.’

Illya’s hands were cold, his fingers freezing at the tips. It wasn’t warm in the room, and all the blood had drained from his arms. His hands felt thick and numb despite how sharply he felt the pain of the metal cuffs cutting into his wrists. He felt so vulnerable, splayed like this, but he tried not to show any reaction. When Ezekiel walked behind him, though, he looked directly into Napoleon’s eyes. He wasn’t trying to pass any secret message. He was just making a connection, because in a way he was utterly alone in this.

Napoleon’s eyes met his and then flickered away, as if it were too much to connect on so intimate a level when Illya was in a position like this.

‘I can’t tell you where that store is, so there’s no point in any of this,’ Napoleon said. He sounded ridiculously calm, as if he were sitting in a business meeting instead of chained to a chair at the mercy of a madman.

  


‘Of course he couldn’t tell the man,’ Illya says, his head resting on the pillow and his eyes on the tiled ceiling. He knows his tone is far too defensive. ‘Ezekiel would have used that uranium on an insane plan to massacre millions. We’re agents. The point of our existence is to stand between men like that and innocent civilians.’

‘Then you don’t feel any resentment towards him at all?’ the psychiatrist asks.

Illya says instinctively, ‘No!’ He’s been under torture often enough to be able to give quick answers that are utterly false.

‘You answered that very quickly,’ Dr Selfridge says. ‘Don’t you need to think about it at all? Resentment can be buried very deep.’

‘Deeply,’ Illya murmurs under his breath, and Selfridge shoots him a look.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Deeply,’ Illya repeats a little more loudly. ‘It’s an adverb. Describes the verb. Deep is a – ’

He trails off, because he knows that he’s splitting grammatical hairs to protect himself from facing unpleasant thoughts. Perhaps it’s a second-language speaker’s foible, although he was just as picky over Russian grammar, and he wasn’t even sure if English was a second language, or maybe a third or a fourth.

The doctor smiles in a disturbingly knowing way, and Illya wonders again what he said yesterday to make them call him in so quickly.

‘You were in a lot of pain, weren’t you? Pain that your partner could have spared you with a few words.’

It’s a terrible feeling that squirms through the inside of him. A terrible feeling. What had he said? What had he said about Napoleon yesterday? He remembers so little. They must have had him half-unconscious on drugs.

‘I’m used to pain,’ he says. He’s in pain now. Even dosed up on painkillers the burning pain presses through. It’s the kind of pain that doesn’t leave you alone.

‘Is it that easy to get used to pain?’ the psychiatrist asks.

Illya exhales slowly. There’s a difference between the long pain of healing and the immediate, visceral pain of being under torture. It’s the not knowing when or how it will come that’s hard under torture – or the knowing exactly how it will come, and being left to fear its sharpness. It’s the not knowing if it will ever stop, not knowing how far into those screaming vaults of pain one can travel without the mercy of unconsciousness or death.

‘You didn’t know where the uranium store was?’ the psychiatrist asks.

‘No,’ Illya says. ‘It was Napoleon’s assignment. Completely confidential, top priority. Only he and Waverly knew. We weren’t even on a mission. We’d just stepped out for some lunch.’

Did that rankle too? Did it rankle that he had been left out of that particular loop? He understood all about secrecy classifications. He knew why he hadn’t been told. But it hadn’t mattered. Despite his lack of intel he had still been made a victim. It was Napoleon’s perceived closeness to him that had made him a victim. It was the assumption that Napoleon would do anything for his partner. It was the assumption that Napoleon wouldn’t let him suffer as he did.

  


He was swinging on the balls of his feet, rising up to try to relieve his wrists for a moment. The ankle cuffs were pulling down, cutting into his skin. His back was arching, his hips thrust forward as he struggled for balance, his lungs labouring under the effort of that pose. His neck was aching and his thighs trembled. There was no way to stand that eased the pressure. And he was cold. There was a draught coming in from the partially open door, and he was shivering. It was just too cold for comfort in the room, at least without clothes.

Ezekiel was standing just next to him, smoking a cigarette, and the smell of the smoke wreathed about him. This whole thing was uncomfortable, and it was demeaning, but it wasn’t exactly torture yet. Enough time in these chains would be torture, but not yet. If this was all that was going to happen, he could bear it; but he knew enough about these situations to know that he hadn’t been bared and chained like this for nothing more to happen. The embedded rings in the ceiling and floor, the embedded rings in that lovely leather armchair, spoke of a lot of preparation. There was going to be more to come.

‘Now, come on, Mr Solo,’ Ezekiel said in a reasonable tone. ‘Now, I know this place is in Nevada. How about we start with a county?’

‘Well, wouldn’t you know, I’ve never been so good on counties,’ Napoleon said, tilting his head on one side with a charmingly innocent look and a smile that Illya had seen on his face a thousand times before. It was as if he were at a friendly but competitive card game, not tied to a chair facing his naked partner and the man who had captured them.

Ezekiel tapped ash into an ashtray and stood considering the lit end of his cigarette. He sucked it until it was red, then he calmly ground the lit end against the nub of Illya’s nipple. That searing bite of pain was excruciating. Illya writhed away, trying not to cry out, and Ezekiel put a hand behind his back to hold him still. Before the cigarette was extinguished Ezekiel returned it to his mouth, puffed the end into a glowing circle again, and ground it against his other nipple. This time a noise did leave Illya’s mouth, a kind of sobbing gasp. He couldn’t hold it in.

‘I can’t tell you where that uranium is,’ Napoleon said, and his voice was suddenly snapping and hard. ‘There’s no need for you to do this, Ezekiel.’

Illya’s eyes were closed. Those two spots were searing hot still, and throbbing. His arms strained at the chains holding him, his hands wanting to claw at the pain, to find something cool to press on the burns. His skin was crawling as hairs stood on end and then settled, as he struggled to process that sudden pain.

  


‘Of course, he  _ could _ have told the man,’ Dr Selfridge points out. ‘He knew the information. He could have told him at any time.’

‘No,’ Illya says, then repeats more forcefully, ‘ _ No. _ He would have been risking millions of lives. It’s our job to put our lives between men like Ezekiel and innocent people.’

‘And if he’d told him a fictitious location?’ Selfridge postulates.

‘You have to be very careful with a man like that,’ Illya says. ‘Men like that are volatile if they suspect they’re being lied to.’

He wonders how much the U.N.C.L.E. psychiatrists really know about the job. They must talk to agents all the time, and learn about the inner workings of their minds, but how much do they really know about the realities of the job?

‘Then Napoleon had no choice.’

‘No choice,’ Illya murmurs. ‘No.’

Somewhere inside him, he knows, is a raging, sobbing thing, a child crying at the injustice, screaming at Napoleon for not helping him, for not saving him. There is a thick wedge of resentment that Napoleon was left undamaged and he was hurt so badly, and that Napoleon  _ didn’t save him _ . That must be what came out yesterday under the drugs. It must be what made them call Selfridge in. It is a monster buried inside him, and Selfridge is trying to coax it out and calm it down.

‘But you were already in pain,’ Selfridge says. ‘That’s a very sensitive and quite intimate area of the body. You were in a lot of pain, and I’m sure you felt violated.’

Illya laughs. ‘I was naked and chained as if I were executing a jumping jack,’ he says tartly. He can still feel the ache in his hips and shoulders and back from being held in that position. His wrists and ankles are still cut and bruised. ‘I felt violated when he cut my clothes off me. Make no mistake. I had no idea what his plans for me were. Yes, it’s a very sensitive area. Yes, it was excruciatingly painful. But compared with what followed...’

  


‘Now really, Mr Solo,’ Ezekiel said. ‘Can’t you see how much I’ve hurt your friend? Don’t you care about that? I can hurt him some more, you know.’

He pressed the cigarette with studied care against Illya’s side, and Illya jerked away, tried to jerk away, but the chains held him and the cigarette followed. Ezekiel drew on the cigarette again and pressed it against Illya’s hip, and Illya bit his lip into his mouth and stared at the wall behind Napoleon’s chair and tried to breathe through the burning. Ezekiel puffed smoke into his face and then twisted the cigarette against his stomach, and a strangled cry was forced through Illya’s bitten lips. He closed his eyes and breathed and breathed as the pain burned deeper and deeper into his skin. He couldn’t do anything. There was nothing he could do but breathe through the pain.

He opened his eyes and saw that Napoleon was looking at him as if somehow he wanted Illya to save him. His knuckles were white on the arms of the chair, the cuffs cutting into his wrists. Napoleon’s helplessness looked terrible, and Illya wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what he could say or how he could say it in front of this man. He just stood, hung, really, and panted, and waited for that red-hot cigarette to be pulled away from his skin.

  


‘Do you think  _ you _ should have been able to do something to help your partner?’ Dr Selfridge asks. ‘While you were chained like that, at that man’s mercy?’

‘Partners rely on each other,’ Illya says in a dark, low voice. He isn’t looking at the doctor. He isn’t looking anywhere. ‘I was being used to break Napoleon down.’

He wonders what he thinks he could have done in that moment. It’s ridiculous to think he could have done anything, really. Perhaps he could have been more stoical. Perhaps he could have hidden the pain. But it was such pain. At that point those little stabs of red hot cigarette felt like the most terrible pain.

‘You can’t feel responsible for Mr Solo’s mental anguish,’ the psychiatrist says. ‘You were not in control, Illya. No one expects a man to take responsibility for things beyond his control.’

It was all beyond his control, wasn’t it? The only one in control in that room was Ezekiel. And Napoleon, he supposes. In a way Napoleon was in control. Napoleon was the one holding the information. All he had needed to do was say a few words.

  


‘All you need to do to save your friend this pain is give me a simple answer,’ Ezekiel said. ‘That’s all, Mr Solo. Just one thing. The location of that uranium.’

‘I cannot tell you that,’ Napoleon said.

Ezekiel sucked the last goodness from the cigarette and put a hand like iron behind Illya’s head, holding him by his hair. He traced the burning stub over Illya’s lips as if he were applying lipstick. He brought his own mouth close and breathed more life into the smouldering stick, his clothed body pressed against Illya’s skin, his lips so close to Illya’s that it was almost like being kissed. But this kiss burnt and burnt, and the burning grew sharper as Ezekiel’s breath pushed through the cigarette. When Illya’s mouth opened in a gasp Ezekiel kissed the stub into his mouth and then held Illya’s jaw closed with surprising strength as the stub burnt and sizzled on his tongue. Smoke choked him and puffed from his nostrils and ash was bitter in his mouth. As soon as his jaw was released he spat viciously through blistered lips. The butt landed on Napoleon’s knee, but he couldn’t spit out the smell and taste or the burn it had left behind.

‘Very nice,’ Ezekiel said, tracing his finger over the burns.

Illya tried to jerk his head away, huffing out inarticulate sobs of pain, but Ezekiel still had a hand in his hair. Napoleon’s mouth was open as if he wanted to speak, and his eyes were blazing with anger. Illya met his eyes and tried to give him strength. It was so hard, because his own eyes were watering and his whole body was trembling, and he didn’t feel strong at all.

‘ I’m sorry,’ Napoleon mouthed silently, and Illya closed his eyes.

Ezekiel had walked behind him. He heard a plug entering a socket, and he heard the tick of heating metal, but he couldn’t see what he was doing. He locked his eyes with Napoleon’s again. He was afraid. Ezekiel was right behind him and perhaps Napoleon couldn’t see what he was doing either.

‘Now, Mr Solo,’ Ezekiel said. ‘That first was a taster. A warm up, if you like. Your friend is about to suffer a great deal of pain. You can spare him that. How about the closest town?’

‘No, Mr Ezekiel,’ Napoleon said softly, but his eyes were still locked on Illya’s, were still locked when a broad plate of burning heat was suddenly pressed into the small of his back. He lurched away, swaying in the chains, trying desperately to get away from that thing that kept pressing relentlessly however he moved.

He couldn’t hold it in. He was screaming. That thing moved, slid a little, and he felt as though the skin were being flayed from his back. There was a hiss of steam, and through the exploding pain he abstractedly knew what it was that Ezekiel was pressing against his back.

  


‘What was it, Illya?’ the psychiatrist asks.

‘It was an iron,’ he says. He has a curious urge to laugh, but laughing would crack his scabbed lips. ‘You know that. It was a simple household iron. The kind of thing anyone might have in the home. Your patented home torture device, suitable for shirts, slacks, and secret agents.’

He is spasmodically opening and closing his fingers on the sheet. He could laugh, a hysterical laugh, the laugh of a man who wants to cry. The psychiatrist isn’t smiling.

‘And he held it on your skin?’ Selfridge asks.

‘Yes,’ Illya says.

That place on his back throbs. There is no comfortable way to lie. For a moment he forgets to breathe. His mind feels dizzy in memory. The pressing of that thing, not being able to get away, no way to get away. He clicks the button for more morphine, but nothing happens. He’s reached his limit for the painkiller, but the pain keeps coming.

He stares at the ceiling, at the man sitting by his bed, at the cream walls of his room. He tries to catch his breath, and he picks up a little glass of water and takes a sip.

‘That incident with your lips. It sounds rather sexual,’ the doctor says.

‘Yes,’ Illya says quietly.  It makes bile rise in his throat to think about it.

‘You felt threatened by that?’

‘It was all threatening,’ Illya says, almost snaps. He draws in a breath and calms himself and says, ‘Yes, I felt threatened by that. Yes, I was afraid that he might take it further. But he didn’t, thank god, whether because he wasn’t going to or just because he didn’t get a chance – ’

He closes his eyes and for a moment he’s feeling it, Ezekiel’s breath foul with smoke, moist over his face. He snaps his eyes open again and takes in the clean, light room. He’s a long way from that dark, fussy house and the helplessness and the fear.

‘Napoleon was watching all this,’ the doctor says.

His eyes are on the way Illya’s fingers tear at the sheet. He tries to stop those movements. It feels like being stripped naked again.

‘Yes,’ Illya replies. ‘Of course he was. He had to watch. He had no choice.’

  


His screams were ringing in his ears and he couldn’t get away from that awful burning pain, and he couldn’t keep his eyes locked on Napoleon’s, he couldn’t control where he looked or how he moved. The flat surface of the iron was still clamped against his skin even though he was arching forward as far as he could, and swaying in the chains, and the pain radiated through his back, throbbed through his skin, crept out through his body.

‘ _ Stop it!’ _ Napoleon screamed, his voice shrill but somehow far away. ‘ _ Stop it! _ ’

The iron left his flesh but the burning went on and on. He sagged in the chains, each breath a wheeze, his ears whistling, nausea roiling in his stomach.

‘The location, then, Mr Solo,’ Ezekiel said, touching his fingers to the site of the burn.

The touch was unbearable. Ezekiel was scraping his nails over the burnt skin. Illya was gasping in air in such short, sobbing jerks it made him dizzy. Despite himself his mind whispered,  _ P _ _ lease tell him. Please just tell him. Please tell him. _

‘I can’t,’ Napoleon said, then in a more pleading tone he said, ‘Illya, I can’t.’

There was a surge of anger that for a moment flared greater than the pain, because in those three little words and the tone they were uttered Napoleon had revealed to Ezekiel just how much he cared. Napoleon wouldn’t tell Ezekiel, but now Ezekiel thought that all he had to do was exert enough pain. Illya was a canvas for him to perform his art.

  


‘Do you think Napoleon _wanted_ to watch?’ Selfridge asks, and Illya makes a noise of disdain.

‘Of course he didn’t want to watch,’ he says instantly. ‘Nobody wants to watch torture. He – I suppose he didn’t want me to be alone. I suppose he watched in horror, like you watch a car crash happening.’

‘But you were angry with him for showing he cared.’

Illya shakes his head. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I was angry because the only reason I was there suffering like that was because Napoleon cares about me. And the more he showed he cared – ’

‘The more pain Ezekiel would inflict on you to change Napoleon’s mind.’

‘Yes,’ Illya says. ‘Yes. And it was stupid to be angry with him because Ezekiel already knew he cared. He was prepared to do anything. I don’t really think Napoleon showing it changed anything. But just for a moment – ’

He closes his eyes and sighs out breath, and his fingers clench and unclench on the sheet, pulling it into little rucks that will ridge and press into his damaged back. Just for a moment in that room he had been so angry, stupidly angry, so much in pain and so afraid of what was to come.

‘You’re allowed to experience irrational emotions, Illya,’ the doctor reminds him. ‘Not everything has to be considered and logical.’

‘No, I know,’ Illya says.

He does know that. He knows that his thinking was so blurred in that room because he was in so much pain and he had no way of stopping it, and it felt like the only one in control was Napoleon, as if Napoleon were the viewer conducting the experience, and he and Ezekiel, in some bizarre way, were the players on the stage. It was all there for Napoleon’s benefit, and it had hurt so much.

  


Ezekiel pressed the iron onto his buttock and stroked it down to the back of his thigh, and he screamed and sobbed. He bowed and arched in the chains. He couldn’t move away. Ezekiel held the iron still against the back of his thigh and he couldn’t jerk it away, and the pain ate into him.

‘A man can die of burns, Solo,’ Ezekiel said, holding the iron steady and still.

Bile was rising in surges into Illya’s throat. He clamped his lips shut and moaned and moaned through the pain; a low, animal noise. Sweat was running in trickles down his face.

‘He can also beg to be allowed to die, because living is so painful.’

Ezekiel came around to the front, and Illya could see it now, just an ordinary household iron. So innocent. He pressed it against Illya’s abdomen, low down, and he coughed and jerked backwards, his arms wrenching. The steam hissed through the vents again, unleashing a scalding steam burn on top of the other, and Illya was suddenly vomiting, unable to control his reaction to the pain.

‘Illya, I can’t,’ Napoleon said, as if Illya had uttered a plea. ‘We’re agents. You know I can’t.’

‘I know,’ Illya said, and his voice shocked him by how much it was shaking. He could hardly speak. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t have the composure to allow himself to talk. It wasn’t fair of Napoleon to try to make him talk, because Napoleon wasn’t being tortured. Napoleon wasn’t in pain. He was clothed and whole and untouched. He was a man while Illya was being made into an animal.

The stomach acid was burning on his tongue and lips. There was sick trickling over the burns on his stomach. Ezekiel lifted the iron close to his face and he smiled as Illya flinched away from the rising heat that tormented his burnt lips. Ezekiel glanced at Napoleon. There was sweat beading on Napoleon’s face and his eyes were agonised.

‘Come on, Mr Solo. I just want that location,’ Ezekiel said sweetly. ‘Just a few words. It’s in your power to stop all this. I haven’t used this yet where it will hurt him most.’

There were curses and bitter execrations running through Illya’s mind, but he also wanted to break and plead, plead, plead for Napoleon to have mercy and just tell the man what he wanted to know. He stood there, shaking uncontrollably, consumed with pain and fear, and he didn’t let himself form a single word for fear that it would be a plea. But Napoleon spoke, and every cell of Illya’s body wanted him to be giving in, but he wasn’t. He just said in a voice of paper thin poise, ‘I can’t give you that information, Ezekiel. Illya knows that.’

‘Mr Solo, you know where I’m going to use this next,’ Ezekiel said chidingly.

‘ I cannot give you that information,’ Napoleon repeated.

Ezekiel lowered the iron in a swift movement, point down, and pressed it hard between Illya’s legs. He sobbed and thrashed in the chains, trying to get away from that terrible pain, but he couldn’t get away, he couldn’t do anything, he –

‘Well, Mr Solo,’ Ezekiel said, and his voice sounded strange and distant, as if it were coming through a bad phone connection.

Illya was wheezing, hanging limply in the chains, and sick was dripping from his mouth. He could still feel the burning heat of the iron pressed between his legs. It was still there. Every in breath wheezed and every out breath screamed.

‘Are you really going to let this go on?’ Ezekiel asked. ‘Do you really care so little for this poor creature? All I want is – ’

The whistling in his ears overtook him. He couldn’t see. A great darkness was blossoming like spreading ink.

Illya came back to himself again, he didn’t know where from. Maybe he had fainted. He was dizzy and consumed with nausea and he was hanging from the chains. There was no strength anywhere in his body, and he wanted to be lying down, needed to be lying down. All his weight hung from his wrists.

The pain hit him like a wall. Between his legs was a searing mass of pain, the inside of his thighs was a searing mass of pain, and his breath started to hitch again. He sucked in sharp gasps of air. He inched his eyes open to see that Napoleon’s face was white and there was blood on his wrists from struggling, and he had bitten through his own lip. Ezekiel was holding the iron close to Illya’s face again. He could feel the heat coming off it, and he could see bits of blistered skin, his skin, stuck on the metal, and he was so afraid he sobbed.

‘Illya, I can’t,’ Napoleon said.

_ Please,  _ Illya thought. The lives of millions were nothing in that agonised moment. But he didn’t say it aloud. He just screamed as the iron pressed and pressed and pressed against his chest, screamed until his screaming was a strange noise behind the whistling in his ears, and he couldn’t see, and everything faded away again.

  


‘At that point you must have thought – ’ the doctor says.

Illya feels as though there is something sitting on his chest. He knows the doctor is trying to draw his feelings from him, but he wants to just close his mouth, close his eyes, and turn away. He wishes he could call a nurse and have this man escorted out of his room.

‘I thought he was going to carry on and on until he killed me,’ he says, because talking is the only way that the doctor will go away, in the end. He will get what he wants and then he will leave. ‘I thought it would be very slow, very, very painful. I didn’t think he would try to kill me, but I thought I would die.’

‘It must have been very hard,’ the doctor says. ‘Helplessness is always hard. You were both helpless, of course.’

‘Yes,’ Illya says.

Of course they were both helpless. Of course Napoleon was as helpless as he was. Except – Napoleon could have stopped it. He could have just said a few words, and Ezekiel would have stopped. Perhaps he would have killed them both, but that would have been quick, and the pain would have been over. Millions might have died but – Wouldn’t Napoleon have come up with a plan if it had been anyone else in those chains? Wouldn’t he have told Ezekiel the location, but made sure he was thwarted at the last minute? Wouldn’t he have done that if it had been a girl in those chains, or any innocent off the streets?

There are tears slipping down his cheeks. It’s a horrific realisation. He lifts a hand and tries to slide them away before they are seen, but of course the doctor has seen. It’s his job to see.

‘Illya,’ the doctor says in a low, steady voice. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘I – wanted him to give in,’ he says in a voice that is almost inaudible.

The doctor leans forward a little. Angrily, Illya wipes his fingertips under his eyes again, and the doctor pulls a tissue from a box and hands it to him.

‘You wanted Napoleon to give in?’ he asks.

It is such a shameful thing to admit to, but something has broken inside him and he can’t stop it, and he says around the little sobs, ‘It hurt so much. I wanted him to give in. I wanted him to save me.’

‘And risk the lives of thousands of people?’

‘ _ Yes _ ,’ he retorts, the anger swelling in him. The emotions are too large and too confused to bear. ‘ _ Yes _ . Anything. It hurt so much. It hurt so much. I just wanted him to – ’

‘Would you have told him the information, if you’d known it, under that torture?’ Selfridge asks.

He draws in a shaking breath. He presses the shredding tissue against his eyes. He tries so hard to steady himself.

‘No,’ he says eventually.

‘Would you have told him if it had been you in the chair and Napoleon in the chains?’

Why do the questions have to be so hard?

‘I don’t know,’ he says, then he says, ‘No. No, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.’

‘Do you resent Napoleon for not saving you from the pain?’ the doctor asks.

  


He was hanging again, head lolling, his knees limp. Sickness and dizziness filling his stomach and head. He fought to lift his head and fought to see. His entire body was a throbbing scream of pain, and Napoleon was sitting there, his face white as old ash, fingers clawed into the beautiful leather, tearing it into little peaks. Ezekiel was standing there, a hand on Illya’s hip; and what did he have in his other hand? Something hot that he had close enough to Illya’s body to make the burns sear. It was a curling iron, Illya thought, a thick metal wand, and his mind spun at the knowledge of the use that could be put to.

  


‘What do you think he was going to do with it?’ the psychiatrist asks.

‘You  _ know  _ what he was going to do with it,’ Illya spits.

It’s too awful to say. He doesn’t want to say it. The knowledge haunts him in his dreams. He wakes up screaming from morphine induced nightmares, although he certainly doesn’t need the morphine to prompt those dreams. It just makes them come more insistently and vividly and makes it harder for him to wake up from their depths.

‘Tell me,’ the psychiatrist says.

Illya swallows. His mouth is very dry. He picks up the glass of water but his hand is shaking and it spills a little as he drinks.

‘Tell me,’ the psychiatrist says again.

‘He was going to sodomise me with it,’ Illya says, and those words feel hard and dry in his mouth. That fear had been like the rush of a storm wind enveloping him. He was already in so much pain, so helpless, so undone. He had been afraid of the terrible pain that action would bring him, afraid of the terrible internal damage, afraid that seeing that, Napoleon would give in. Surely that would have been the moment when Napoleon would give in? Would he had sat through that and done nothing? Could he have?

  


Ezekiel was holding that heated wand and smiling, and he spat on it and let the spittle sizzle away. He was standing by Illya, smiling, stroking a hand over one of the blistering burns. The terror was like a live thing inside him, battering and flailing and screaming to get out. He could hardly breathe. He could hardly suck air in before it was jerking out again.

But there was something odd in the centre of Ezekiel’s forehead. It was a dark spot the size of a dime. And then Ezekiel crumpled, and he was on the floor between him and Napoleon, and there was blood pooling onto the carpet, mixing with the vomit that was already there.

‘After all, the man wasn’t exactly on  _ our _ side, either,’ said a woman’s voice. Illya felt too far gone to really take it in, but he knew that voice. He saw Angelique come into view. She cast him a momentary, disdainful glance, but her attention was for Napoleon. She leant over him in the chair and kissed him deeply and languidly. Napoleon responded. Of course he responded. Illya watched, dizzy, his vision blurred. He was hanging from his wrists because something was wrong with his legs and they just wouldn’t take his weight.

‘You know, darling, if we hadn’t just found out where the uranium is through other avenues I’d have to continue this charming scenario,’ Angelique said, sparing a single glance for Illya. ‘But your poor friend does look past his best.’

‘ _ Just –  _ ’ Napoleon gritted out through clenched teeth. Then he modulated his voice and said, ‘Let him down, at any rate.’

‘Oh, you can do that,’ she said airily. ‘I don’t really want to touch him. He’s all blistered. It looks horrid.’

She used a pick to open just one of Napoleon’s cuffs, stroked her hand sensuously down his body and between his legs, blew him a kiss, and left. The room smelt of perfume and vomit and burnt skin. The pick was in Napoleon’s lap.

For a moment Napoleon seemed stunned, and Illya just hung. But then Napoleon was moving, opening his other cuff, getting the restraints off his ankles, then kneeling at Illya’s feet picking those locks too. He had to get a chair to reach the wrist cuffs and when they were open Illya just fell into Napoleon’s arms. The burns seared everywhere they were touched. He couldn’t bear to be touched but he couldn’t hold himself up. He couldn’t bear the rough carpet against his skin but he couldn’t stand.

‘Stay there,’ Napoleon said, and then he was gone, and Illya was lying on the carpet, his breath wheezing in his lungs, in so much pain that he was fading in and out. He could see Ezekiel dead on the carpet, eyes open, blood in a dark trickle down his forehead and soaking into the pile. He was very close to Ezekiel, very close to the blood and his own vomit and the smell of piss. Had Ezekiel done that to him? Had he wet himself with fear and pain?

  


‘And the woman was?’

‘Angelique,’ Illya says, and startles himself with the venom he injected into that word. Hadn’t she saved him? Hadn’t she saved him from horrific pain and death?

‘Another agent?’ Selfridge asks, curiously, and Illya snorts.

‘Not exactly. A Thrush. An extremely – ’

He had been going to say beautiful, but he didn’t think her beautiful. Wasn’t her nose just a little too upturned? Wasn’t she just a little too heavy-set? But Napoleon certainly always seemed to think her beautiful. It baffles him how an agent as professional as Napoleon can throw everything out of the window for peroxide blonde hair and a mink coat.

‘She is an extremely dangerous woman,’ he says carefully, his eyes on a rather faded watercolour print that hangs on the opposite wall. ‘She reminds one of a black widow spider.’

‘But she saved your life,’ Selfridge points out.

‘Yes,’ Illya says.

Yes, she saved his life. She put a beautiful bullet deep into that twisted brain, and it gives him pleasure to think of that slug of lead bursting through blood and soft matter and leaving a ripped channel of death and chaos behind. But then she kissed Napoleon, and Napoleon –

‘You have some issues with the woman,’ Selfridge says.

Illya doesn’t know what to say. How does he verbalise the issues he has with Angelique, when they are so bound up in Napoleon’s response to her? It makes him sound like a jealous lover. How does he express how vulnerable it makes him feel, how angry it makes him feel, to see Napoleon literally sleeping with the enemy? Fucking the enemy, he should put it, if he really wants to be literal. There can’t be much sleep when Napoleon is with her. If Napoleon actually slept with her Illya suspects that he wouldn’t wake up. Maybe that’s why it upsets him so much. He cannot fathom how Napoleon can give himself to a woman who would betray him as easily as killing a fly. He cannot fathom how Napoleon can ignore every plea and scrap of advice from his partner, and still fuck that woman.

‘Yes, I have – issues,’ he says. ‘But she did save my life.’

Maybe that rankles as well. Maybe it’s the thought that she only saved his life because it would gain her credit with Napoleon. Maybe it was because when she kissed Napoleon, as Illya hung there in agony, he kissed her back.

  


He slipped in and out of awareness, smelt those visceral, pungent smells so close to his face, sobbed out his pain, unable to move. There was no strength in any part of his body. He was shaking terribly, his hand trembling on the carpet in front of his face. Then Napoleon was back, picking him up in his arms, and he gasped and cried as he was carried, every inch of his skin in agony. Napoleon set him in a bath which was filling with cold water. The first chill made him gasp, but he slumped against the cool metal curves, and for a moment the pain was eased.

‘I need to find a phone,’ Napoleon said. ‘Can you keep your head above the water, Illya?  _ Illya? _ ’

‘Yes,’ he said, although he wasn’t at all sure. Everything was confused and he kept dipping towards a blessed state of nothingness, but there wasn’t enough water yet for it to be a worry.

‘I’m worried about you,’ Napoleon said, closing a hand around Illya’s, pressing both hands over it to warm it up. The cool water was seeping all the heat from his body. It was lapping up over his  blistered  chest. ‘I don’t know what’s best to do.’

There was uncharacteristic panic in his voice and that made Illya worry too.

‘The phone?’ he asked and Napoleon said, ‘I’ve been and done that. Ambulance is on its way. Illya, I’m worried I’m giving you hypothermia to save you from the burns. I’m worried about shock. I don’t know what to do.’

‘Oh,’ Illya said, because he certainly didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know anything. He felt like he was drifting in a cloud of pain, and everywhere it touched him was pain, and Napoleon could have stopped it, he could have stopped it with just a few words – but he knew that Napoleon couldn’t have done that, because – 

‘I’m an agent,’ he said out loud. He was part of the thin line between good and terrible evil. His body was a buffer.

‘Yes, I know you are,’ Napoleon said. ‘We both are. And it’s so damn – ’ For a moment Napoleon was mute and struggling against something inside his mind. But then he said, ‘I’m sorry, Illya. I’m so sorry.’

Illya felt as if he were floating. Every inch of him was cold. Every inch of him burnt. His mind was so dizzy, and he couldn’t see properly even when he opened his eyes wide. Napoleon seemed so far away. Nothing seemed to matter.

‘Love,’ he said. ‘Люблю всё. Я...’

He could feel Napoleon’s hands shaking him. It didn’t matter. There was so much peace, and everything was white. But something was battering at the stillness. Something manhandling his body, something, some cloth wrapping and pressing at those burns, Napoleon saying, ‘ _ Illya.  _ Stay with me. Illya, come on now.’

The whiteness was so easy and perfect and nothing else really mattered. But suddenly there were other voices, other people, and he was staring at a bathroom ceiling, and the pain was so bad. He could hear Napoleon tangled in those voices. He could see Napoleon’s eyes. He faded in and out. The ceiling was an ambulance, there was the rumbling of an engine, the pain was so bad he sobbed. Napoleon’s hand was in his and there was a needle in the back of his hand, and somehow a kind of ease started to slip in around the pain, smoothing its sharpness. He felt so sleepy and so weak. He felt the vibration of the engine and tried to blink as a bright light was shone into his eyes and tried to give answers to some kind of vague questions they were asking him, but they didn’t seem to understand what he said in reply.

‘Illya, if you can’t speak English can you at least try French?’ Napoleon asked gently. ‘I’d have more of a chance than Russian.’

‘Oh,’ he murmured, but then he seemed to drift away, Napoleon’s hand in his, and the pain slowly winnowing into sleep.

  


He is half asleep, dopey, so full of painkiller that it’s hard to know what time it is, where this is, who is in the room. He remembers the psychiatrist leaving after what felt like far, far too long talking, and the doctor coming in and examining his burns, and the nurse giving him something that made everything melt. But now there’s someone in a suit sitting by his bed again, and he wonders for a moment if it’s the psychiatrist back again – but no, it’s Napoleon, sitting in that chair and smiling at him. He tries to remember if he saw Napoleon at all after he fell asleep in the ambulance. He doesn’t think he did. He’s been here – two days? Three days? – and he doesn’t remember seeing Napoleon at all.

‘Hey,’ Napoleon says. ‘Are you waking up?’

Illya blinks at him. He feels as though he were waking from a strange dream. Was the psychiatrist real? Did he really talk about all those things?

‘Selfridge,’ he murmurs, and Napoleon says, ‘Ahh. Yes, Dr Selfridge said he’d seen you this morning. He spent the afternoon talking to me. It was – ’

When Napoleon trails off Illya tries to smile, and his lips burn. He knows that Napoleon hates talking to psychiatrists as much as he does.

‘Yes, he’s a perceptive fellow, isn’t he?’ Illya murmurs.

He opens his eyes a little wider and tries to sit up a bit more. Napoleon hurries to crank up the bed head and then puts a hand under his arm to help him sit forward a little so Napoleon can move the pillows and plump them ready for Illya to sink back against them.

‘Coffee?’ Napoleon asks, and before Illya can demur because he can’t bear hot drinks on his burnt lips and in his burnt mouth, Napoleon says, ‘Iced, of course.’

‘Oh,’ Illya says in surprise. ‘Yes. Thank you.’

He takes the tall paper cup and notices that Napoleon’s wrist is bandaged.

‘You’re hurt,’ he says, confused.

Napoleon holds up both hands to show him, and he sees that while one wrist is just bandaged, there’s a light cast on the other.

‘Cuts and bruises,’ Napoleon says. ‘Trying to get out of those cuffs. I know there’s no point in struggling against them but somehow I always try.’

‘They don’t put plaster casts on bruises,’ Illya points out.

‘Ah, well, it seems I struggled a bit too hard,’ Napoleon says ruefully. ‘I cracked a bone.’

‘Oh,’ Illya says.

He tries to think of something pithy to say, but there’s nothing. It isn’t easy to break one’s own bones. Napoleon must have been desperate.

‘Thank you,’ he says. He can’t think of an apt way to show his gratitude. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘No, neither did I,’ Napoleon says with a smile.

Illya sips at the coffee, which is rich and milky and full of ice. It is a blessing on his tongue and slips down his throat so perfectly. It was thoughtful of Napoleon to bring it for him.

‘ Where the devil have you been, anyway?’ Illya asks. ‘How long have I been here? Where were you?’

Napoleon smiles rather shamefacedly. ‘Ah, well, first I went to Headquarters,’ he admits. ‘After I saw you safely to the hospital, I mean. But I wanted to get after Angelique – because she – do you remember her saying that Thrush had found the location of that uranium?’ he asks rather tentatively, as Illya glowers.

‘ Oh,’ Illya says, forehead creasing. He thinks he remembers something like that. That would certainly be a better reason for chasing Angelique than an attempt to get inside her underwear, even if both eventualities would be likely with Napoleon.

‘ Well, they slapped medical restrictions on me as soon as I got in,’ Napoleon says, ‘so I had to arrange another team to go after Angelique. I had to organise extra guards for the uranium. Then I crashed out overnight, and when I woke in the morning I had to write out the reports.’

‘ With that arm?’ Illya asks, lifting an eyebrow.

‘ Ah, well, yes, I wrote the reports before they hauled me off for an x-ray,’ Napoleon admits, and Illya gives him an exasperated look. Napoleon would be the first to berate Illya for not seeking medical attention, but the truth is, it’s just as hard to get Napoleon to admit to pain. In the past he has tried to pass off a plaster-casted arm as a simple sprain just to avoid being sent onto light duties.

‘ So they discovered you had broken your wrist in trying to get out of the cuffs?’ Illya asks. It really is strangely gratifying to know that Napoleon fought so hard.

His partner looks rather sheepish. ‘Er, yes, they discovered that, and somehow they managed to make the whole process take hours. In retrospect, I smell a rat. I was tired and in pain and – ’ Napoleon clears his throat and flicks some hair away from his forehead and says, ‘Between you and me, Illya, I was a mess – for the very reasons that our friendly psych doctor collared me for three hours this afternoon. They kept me around in medical all day and knocked me out with sleeping pills in the evening, and I woke up this morning with no idea what day it was or where I was. I came to the hospital this morning but you were with Selfridge, and when he finished with you, you were having a little nap, I was told, and Selfridge collared me before you woke up again. So here I am, at last.’

‘ The prodigal son,’ Illya murmurs.

‘ The prodigal son,’ Napoleon echoes. Then he leans forward a little and asks gently, ‘Are you all right, Illya?’

It’s unusual for Napoleon to let people see straight through the façade, but Illya is one of the few he permits inside.

‘Yes,’ Illya says, then he says, ‘No,’ then he says, ‘I suppose the psychiatrist had the right idea in coming to see me. It was – tough.’

‘It was tough,’ Napoleon echoes, then adds quickly, ‘I know – I know I wasn’t the one on the receiving end, but – God, Illya, that was horrific to be a witness to.’ He’s silent for a moment, and Illya doesn’t know what to say, and then Napoleon says, ‘Dr Selfridge says you might have been left with some – well, some confused feelings.’

Illya gives a little laugh. ‘Confused,’ he echoes.

Somehow it’s easier to spill these things to the psychiatrist than it is to Napoleon. It feels like a huge thing to admit to in front of Napoleon.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Confused feelings. I was – It was – ’ He takes in a deep breath. Why does it feel so hard to confess? Napoleon was there to see him scream and sob. He was there to see him vomit and faint. ‘The pain was horrendous, Napoleon. The whole scenario was – ’

He can’t. Not after talking about it to the psychiatrist, not in front of Napoleon. He can’t verbalise it all over again. He is looking at Napoleon and he wants to say it. He wants to say,  _ W _ _ hy didn’t you save me? Why didn’t you tell him what he wanted to know? _ He doesn’t know how to talk because he’s afraid of what he will say.

‘ Illya,’ Napoleon says softly, touching fingertips to Illya’s cheek. They come back glistening wet.

‘ I wanted you to give in,’ Illya says suddenly, sobs suddenly. It must be the painkillers. The painkillers and the pain they are shrouding over are conspiring to break him apart. He closes his eyes hard and the tears are squeezed out and trickle down his cheeks. ‘It hurt so much. I wanted you to give in.’

Napoleon’s hand closes around his.

‘ I wanted to give in,’ Napoleon says very quietly. ‘I –  _ wanted _ to give in.’

He stops and clears his throat and lifts his broken wrist to delicately dab at his own eyes with awkward fingers. Illya is holding the other hand so tightly.

‘ Illya, that was one of the hardest things I have ever had to watch,’ he says. ‘That sounds ridiculous, I know. I wasn’t the one suffering it. But – ’

Illya shakes his head, eyes closed still. He takes in a breath and holds it, and when he exhales he makes sure that the air comes out slowly and steadily past his blistered lips. He breathes in again, and out again, and each breath is steadier than the last.

‘ I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. My head is – ’

Napoleon’s hand squeezes gently on his. ‘It doesn’t matter if it takes all the king’s horses and all the king’s men,’ he says.

Illya opens his eyes, bemused.

‘ Sometimes I forget you didn’t grow up with the same rhymes,’ Napoleon says. ‘You’ve heard of Humpty Dumpty, yes?’

‘ Oh,’ Illya says, and he  feels a  sudden  lightness . Yes, he’s heard of Humpty Dumpty. ‘Well, I’m sure the psychiatrist carries an extra large roll of duct tape,’ he says, but he wonders if it is really the psychiatrist he needs, or just the ability to talk like this with Napoleon, to heal over the rifts that had been caused by terrible fear and terrible pain.

He lies there, his head against the pillows, just recovering his emotional poise. He picks up that paper cup of iced coffee again and most of the ice has melted, but it’s still cool and soothing in his mouth.

‘ The nurses will complain about you bringing me caffeine, I am sure,’ he comments, and Napoleon smiles.

‘ Well, I’m sure I can kiss the frowns off their faces,’ he replies with a ridiculous wink, but that reminds Illya of the other thing that keeps milling in his head.  _ Angelique _ . That woman has the power to torment him even when she is miles away. He hopes, at least, that she is miles away. But while he was hanging in those chains Napoleon kissed Angelique, as if for a moment Illya didn’t exist at all.

‘Is it an imperative with you, Napoleon?’ he asks. ‘If a woman kisses you, do you have no hope of resisting? An autonomic reaction? If  _ I _ kissed you would you have to complete the kiss before you pulled away?’

Napoleon shows him that boyish, innocent grin. ‘Well, Illya, you’re a mite different to most of the people who kiss me,’ he says.

‘ And Angelique?’ Illya asks quietly.

‘ Angelique,’ Napoleon echoes, and a little awkwardness rises. ‘In the case of Angelique. Well...’ His voice softens. ‘Illya, the woman had a gun, and she held every card. If I’d – ahem – displeased her – do you think she would have thought twice about shooting you too, or both of us? Or just walking out and leaving us there? I couldn’t have got out of those cuffs without help, and you certainly couldn’t. If I hadn’t kissed her back, you would in most probability be dead now.’

‘ Ah,’ Illya says, considering that.

He doesn’t know how Napoleon does it. If a woman kissed him like that he would spend the first few seconds of the kiss working out what to do. By the time he had decided the kiss should be reciprocated, it would probably be too late. Perhaps, he thinks, he should practice spontaneous kissing, if such a thing is possible.

‘ You kissed her to save my life,’ Illya says eventually. ‘How very imaginative of you.’

‘ Well,’ Napoleon starts, then seems to think better of whatever he was going to say, and smiles. ‘We’re both alive,’ he says, ‘and Ezekiel is dead, and that uranium is far away from harm.’

‘ Yes,’ Illya murmurs, but suddenly he’s enormously, irresistibly tired, and he yawns, and his burnt lips crack and sear.

‘ Tired?’ Napoleon asks. ‘They said I shouldn’t keep you too long.’

‘ Tired,’ Illya says. He feels as though he is not lying nearly flat enough. Suddenly the pain is pressing harder than ever and everything is starting to waver around him.

‘ Here, hold on,’ Napoleon says.

He lowers the bed head and the swimming feeling in Illya’s head starts to level out a bit.

‘ Better?’ Napoleon asks. ‘You went quite pale for a minute there.’

‘ Yeah,’ Illya murmurs. He feels pale. ‘Very tired.’

The door bumps and clatters open and a nurse comes in pushing a cart heaped with gauze and cotton wool and other paraphernalia.

‘ Mr Kuryakin, it’s time for your bandages and another painkiller and the catheter bag will need changing, and – ’ She picks up the empty paper cup from the bedside cabinet and sniffs it and says, ‘Coffee? Really, Mr Solo, I don’t know how you expect this man to sleep. I’ll have to ask you to step out while I see to Mr Kuryakin’s dressings. Visiting hours have been over for ten minutes anyway, so be off with you. I shouldn’t let you in again, bringing him things like that.’

Perhaps, Illya thinks, she’ll let Napoleon in again if he kisses her like he kissed Angelique. But Napoleon doesn’t kiss the nurse. He gets to his feet and straightens his cuffs, and then he bends and drops a kiss on Illya’s forehead. That is so like Napoleon. He gives his gifts wherever he can.

‘ I’ll be back tomorrow, IK,’ he promises. ‘I’ll bring – Uh – I’ll bring grapes. I’m sure you’d like grapes better than coffee.’

As he walks out of the room there is the sound of a crutch clicking on the floor. Illya looks blearily after him and sees he has a cast sticking out of his trouser leg too. It’s hard to struggle enough to break a wrist. To break an ankle is incredible. He hadn’t realised how hard Napoleon had fought.

‘ Are you all right, Mr Kuryakin?’ the nurse asks, stroking a hand over Illya’s forehead, stroking away the lingering feeling of Napoleon’s kiss.

‘ Yes,’ he murmurs. His head aches and he still feels dizzy. He feels like sinking into the bed and falling away. ‘Yes, I’m all right. Just tired. Just very tired.’

‘ And in a good deal of pain, no doubt,’ she says. It doesn’t take much perception or medical skill to see that. ‘Well, I will see to your dressings, and I will give you your painkiller, and perhaps you can sleep for a while. Dr Selfridge will be back tomorrow. I expect you’ll have a lot to talk about with him.’

He will, Illya is sure. He will have a lot to talk about. But it won’t be about Napoleon. Those broken bones have told their own story. A lot has been put to rest.

  



End file.
